Why One Man Is Betting On A Comeback By U.s. Industries

October 13, 1985|By Louis Rukeyser

NEW YORK — Hey, American manufacturers, maybe you're not as dead as you think.

At a time when gloom about the future of U.S. heavy industry is so thick that you could cut it with a sushi knife -- and many pessimists are turning in desperation to the guaranteed non-remedy of protectionism -- along comes an eminently hard-nosed business executive who tells me America should be back on top on the trading world in the next decade.

The holder of this unorthodox and fascinating view is Joseph J. Kroger, executive vice president of Sperry Corp. and president of its Information Systems Group.

Kroger says he discerns unmistakable signs that U.S. manufacturing, ''far from being dead and buried, is on the verge of a remarkable comeback.''

Those who buy the conventional evaluation of today's economy may well wonder what Kroger has been smoking.

As has been well publicized, the United States has lost more than 1.6 million manufacturing jobs since 1979, and such major corporations as American Telephone & Telegraph Co., Eastman Kodak and Westinghouse have announced recently that they will trim their labor forces and restructure their plants to meet the competitive thrusts of Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and other nations with low production costs. Congress and the White House are arguing only about how much anti-trade legislation is necessary to help brake the export of jobs.

Kroger, though, not only does not share this panic but openly scoffs at reports chronicling the demise of American industry.

Instead, he sees the country about to realize the ''impossible dream'' of revitalizing its industrial productivity and regaining the international edge it held in the 1990s.

The secret weapon that Kroger thinks will make American (and other) consumers voluntarily shift allegiance and proudly buy products labeled ''Made in U.S.A.'' is nothing other than an old-fashioned American virtue: technological leadership.

Specifically, he sees increased use of industrial computers bringing now- struggling U.S. manufacturers back into a true leadership role as we approach the 21st century.

Kroger's optimistic forecast is based on personal experience coupled with the growing demand by new and longtime manufacturers for technological advances that spawned what are called computer-integrated manufacturing systems, or CIMs. Not surprisingly, Sperry, along with International Business Machines Corp., is a leading supplier of CIMs for the steel, auto and textile industries and a host of other major -- and often beleaguered -- manufacturers.

With CIMs, manufacturing plants are hooking the new technologies into electronic networks, creating what in effect are central nervous systems for factories that permit them to streamline operations in virtually every area -- from the front office to the assembly line and the shipping docks.

There was a time when such technological pioneering would have been routine for the United States. Now, though, industry experts frequently cite our technological gaps as contributing to the loss of market share to foreign companies. (For every robot used in this country, Japan uses 11.)

Labor-union resistance has been a factor here. But it is no secret that blue-collar workers are beginning to share their tasks with robots, laser scanners and ultrasonic probes -- and many workers, in fact, owe their continuing employment to such devices.

A recent report by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment concluded that, while the need for craft workers, laborers and clerks might decrease, technological change would increase the demand for engineers, computer scientists, technicians, repairers and installers.

A shifting economy is inevitably scary to those whose traditional employment seems imperiled. But if Kroger is right, the technology-driven America that will emerge will be able to provide challenging jobs and higher living standards for all its citizens.

He talks hearteningly of steel mills operating near full capacity; Detroit, without the aid of quotas, blunting the import invasion; a boon for U.S. machine-tool makers; American shoemakers reclaiming lost markets; textile makers and jeans designers returning home; and even baseball uniforms, most of which are now produced in Japan, again being manufactured in the land of Abner Doubleday.

Even if this untrendy industrial optimism is only partly right about the significance of the technological update now within the grasp of U.S. manufacturers, it suggests that, once again, the dumbest prediction of all may be to count America out.